The CEO of General Electric has broken his silence over the company’s dispute with the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. GE polluted the Housatonic River with PCB’s decades ago when it ran a factory in Pittsfield and has been butting heads with the EPA over the second phase of cleaning up the river.
General Electric head Jeff Immelt spoke at an event in Boston Monday, touting GE’s decision to move its headquarters there. He says now that the company is in Massachusetts…
“It’s our intention to work well with the governor and the EPA to do another successful project on the Housatonic,” Immelt says.
A look at legal filings shows GE and the EPA haven’t been working together well at all. They’ve differed strongly on how to decontaminate the river and could be headed to court. Immelt says GE’s experience in river clean ups, including the first part of the Housatonic, makes it capable of coming up with an acceptable solution.
“We’re always open to conversation, but we also have a great deal of knowledge,” Immelt says.
Tim Gray of the Housatonic River Initiative disagrees with Immelt and says what the EPA is calling for now isn’t even as strong of a solution as first proposed.
“They’ve weakened EPA down and then what do they do?,” Gray says. “They come and they ask for more, like ‘we want to dump all the PCB’s in dumps along the river, that we want to take far less PCB’s out than the EPA wants us to take out.’ ”
Gray says he wouldn’t be surprised if GE is moving to Boston, in part, to be closer to state regulators. And the company has already worked well with the Baker administration, winning more than $100-million in state incentives. Governor Charlie Baker, who was on-stage with Immelt Monday, has said in the past GE’s move to Boston and the Housatonic will be treated as separate issues.
Pittsfield State Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier agrees with the governor’s stance.
“This wasn’t something that he said ‘hey, if you come to Boston, we’re going to hold back on pressing you for a better cleanup,’ ” Farley-Bouvier says. “I expect him to be a really strong advocate for the people of the Berkshires.”
And both Farley-Bouvier and Gray say it doesn’t matter how long it takes for GE and the EPA to reach a compromise, as long as they get it right.